Memorize

I have decided to become a good/better memorizer. The first assignment I'm giving myself is this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- because it's easier to start with something that rhymes- and I like him and remember a lot of his poems from back in school... Like for instance....

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth, I know not where
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in it's flight

I breathed a song into the air
It fell to earth, I know not where
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of a song?

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the arrow still unbroke
And the song, from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Or perhaps this classic

The Pasture Spring

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
And wait to watch the water clear, I may
I shan't be gone long-
You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
Standing by the mother, it is so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long-
You come too.

If you've never read these, you don't care... but I remember them from school... quoting them a million times. The good 'ole days.

And now my assignment-

Seaweed

When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas; —

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean
Of the poet's soul, erelong
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor
That forever
Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate; —

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.